


the snow on fire

by la_dissonance



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Smut, Bondage, Happy Ending, Knife Play, M/M, Mostly Smut, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Sibling Incest, description of thor's eye injury, don't try this at home!!!! i certainly didn't, loki-typical angst, magical healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 09:30:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13051260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_dissonance/pseuds/la_dissonance
Summary: It quickly becomes too much to just stand in the circle of Thor's arms and allow himself to be held. A hundred plans spool out before him; ways this could be subverted, bent to some advantage.He opens his mouth to speak one into being, but Thor rubs a soothing circle on his back and says, "Shh, tell me later. Let me enjoy my hug. Knowing you, it'll have to last me a good five hundred years."





	the snow on fire

**Author's Note:**

> Am I posting a second fic that's a coda to the exact same scene as my last fic? YOU BET. I will keep writing fic of this scene until the day I die. 
> 
> Thanks to my amazing betas 3pershand and sassbandit, you guys are the bomb. 
> 
> Title is from Red Trails by Fever Ray

Loki lingers outside the door for a long time before going in. He can hear Thor moving around inside; if he were to move, Thor would probably hear him.

He doesn't know why he came. He'd set out after the ship without thinking, a decision that was not a decision, and now all he can do is piece together excuses, paint various shades of rationale over his memories.

In the one he likes best, he came to usurp Thor's throne. Finally take him unaware, somehow, sow chaos, take what's his. Another version has him coming back to join Thor and his warriors in the mead halls, to honor the fallen, compose songs about the victories. They would sing songs about Loki, perhaps. Or maybe he doesn't need a reason. He came here because he belongs; this ship full of people he helped save is his home now, or one of them.

In the most likely version, he came to say goodbye. This balance between them is fragile, it can't be meant to last.

It's without deciding, again, that he slips inside the room: act first and come up with the reason after, the way all the best plans fall into place. Thor has his back turned, and when he turns back around, he takes Loki for an illusion.

They trade words, feeling for the edges of this new place: an invitation that sounds like a threat from Thor; a threat that sounds like an invitation from Loki.

Thor opens his arms and Loki crosses the room to him without knowing what he hopes to gain. He will see what he gains, and then hope for that. Thor's arms wrap around Loki's shoulders, around his ribs, strong and solid but carefully loose, as if Thor fears Loki might disappear if he squeezes too tightly. Maybe that is what Loki might gain—slip out of Thor's arms, destabilize their balance, swing it to his favor. But no, Thor would expect that. Does expect that, clearly.

"I'm still here, Thor," he says instead, leans more of his weight into Thor's broad chest, lets his arms circle Thor's body. Holds on. 

On an exhale, Thor's grip tightens, until he's holding onto Loki with all his strength. Loki allows himself to be crushed gently against Thor's chest, and hides his face in the crook of Thor's neck. His skin is warm and smells like a lightning strike.

It quickly becomes too much, too _simple_ to just stand in the circle of Thor's arms and allow himself to be held. A hundred plans spool out before him like fibers waiting to be spun into thread; ways this could be subverted, bent to some advantage. He opens his mouth to speak one into being, but Thor rubs a soothing circle on his back and says, "Shh, tell me later. Let me enjoy my hug. Knowing you, it'll have to last me a good five hundred years."

Granting favors is its own advantage, as they both well know. And it means that Loki admits nothing when he allows Thor to hold him, and hold him, and hold him. Doesn't admit that he might have allowed this for his sake as much as Thor's, doesn't admit that if Thor hadn't offered, Loki may have been incapable of preventing himself from gathering Thor up in his own arms and holding on for dear life.

It's the last vestiges of this urge that drive him to press his lips to the pulse behind Thor's ear as Thor finally releases him from the embrace. It isn't part of a plan: the plan will come after, when Thor responds with confusion, or anger, or jest.

Thor says nothing, though, just beams at Loki all warm and golden, giving him one last congenial squeeze on the shoulder. The moment hangs between them, unbroken.

Loki clears his throat and looks out the window. "So, where to next?"

Thor takes the cue and joins him at the window, looking out at the unbroken field of distant stars. "We could go anywhere, if we're patient enough. I might put it to a vote. It's not just my life, everyone should get a say."

"Ever the reluctant king. Recent events haven't given you more of a taste for it?"

Thor's shoulder rises and falls in Loki's periphery as he shrugs. Loki can still feel the after-impression of Thor's skin on his lips; he wonders if Thor is can feel the impression's mirror image on his skin. If he does, he hides it well.

"Maybe," Thor says. "I told Hela I'd be better at it than her, while we were fighting. Sort of puts things in perspective." They watch the unmoving stars for a minute, until Thor asks, "What about you?"

"Oh, I don't know," Loki says. "Plenty of places need a trickster god." _Maybe the place you're going_ , he doesn't say.

" _Need_ might be putting it a bit strongly," Thor says. The corner of his mouth curls up with amusement and takes the sting out of it.

The gold tooling on Thor's eye patch glints in his reflection as he turns his head. Loki's fingers itch by his sides. He'd seen the wound when it was raw; an open gash of negative space on Thor's face. It doesn't seem like something that could have been cleaned up and tucked away so easily.

"How's the eye?" he asks, as casual as he can. Maybe this is what he's doing here. Probing weaknesses, or making himself indispensable. 

"Oh, same as always." Thor grins. "Light goes in, vision happens. Eyes, you know."

Loki lets out a huff of fond frustration and faces Thor. "Not — not your working eye. The one Hela got. What kind of healer were you even able to find out here?"

"It's no harder to find healers here than on Asgard; we have almost the entire population in this ship. The best palace healer looked at it as soon as we got away."

"As if they've ever seen a wound like that before," Loki says. "Tell me it's not bothering you."

Thor's gaze slides back to the view out the window. "There were others wounded worse than I. It is nothing I cannot bear.″

Loki's hands are restless, begging to pluck at the strands of magic around them. ″Let me look at it.″ Loki reaches out and Thor tilts his head, allowing access. He was always too trusting, but Loki knows from half an hour trapped in agony on a hangar floor that he's not, anymore. The trust is a conscious choice, an offering. One Loki could use, if he wanted. He tucks it away for later.

The skin underneath the eyepatch is pink and taut, like the too-new skin under a picked-off scab. The eye itself is gone; all that's left in its place is this smooth concavity. If the wound had been made with an ordinary blade, it would look to be healing well, but Loki suspects the clean appearance is deceiving. The blade that made this wound had been a pure manifestation of Hela's power, ancient and twisted and honed to a vengeful edge.

Loki spreads his fingertips wide over Thor's cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, his forehead and temple, palm hiding the empty eye socket from view as he maps out the space. The stolen kiss hangs between them still, unacknowledged, but the question temporarily on hold. His touches now have purpose, permission asked and granted.

He lets his awareness spool out and senses the threads of the healing magic on the surface, and underneath, the snarled, festering influence of Hela's blade. Left alone, the healing wouldn't hold for much longer before it came undone, thread by thread. And in the meantime, the malign knot in Thor's life-force might as well be a fresh wound, for all the pain it has to be causing him. Loki's upper lip raises in a snarl, he makes a noise low in his throat.

″Easy there,″ Thor says, placing a calming hand on Loki's forearm.

Loki shakes him off. ″Incompetent fools. I'm fixing this now, hold still.″

Thor raises his hands in surrender, leans back against the wide window into space, settles in until he's half-sitting on the sill, his face tipped up toward Loki.

Satisfied that Thor means to stay put, Loki gets to work picking apart the strands of malignancy that make up the unseen wound. It's easy work, once he settles into the rhythm of it. Hela's power feels unexpectedly familiar to him, even though she was less his real sister than Thor is his real brother. The undoing of the wound would have been a severe risk to Thor under anyone else's hands; as he works, Loki finds and defuses several nasty surprises he only thinks to anticipate moments before they would go to work corroding the healthy flesh, or driving spikes out in all directions, or poisoning Thor's mind. He can see why the palace healers chose to paper this over rather than tackling it head on, but he can't quite forgive them.

The worst is past soon enough. As he dissolves the final traces of the wound's influence, Loki feels the same elation he did during the battle, paired with the same helpless wanting: a victory assured, a battle well-won, but not his battle, nor his victory to take. Loki is no footsoldier for Asgard and its king; he has long since made himself into something else. 

Loki eases back until only his thumbs are resting lightly on Thor's face, one at the corner of his eye, the other where the corner of an eye once was.

At some point during the healing Thor's eye had slid shut; he keeps it shut now, but his whole face crinkles up in a gentle smile. Thor hadn't looked pained before, but the difference is obvious now. A plan crystallizes in that moment, out of all the all the threads he's set aside; suddenly there's nothing Loki wants more than to close the space between them and press his lips to Thor's, taste the sparks under his skin. _And gain what,_ he asks himself, but that's not how it works. Jump first, ask questions after.

″Better?″ Loki asks, inanely. Of course it's better now.

″Much,″ Thor says. ″Thank you.″

Loki bristles. He'd meant to incur no debt here, had healed the wound simply because it needed healing. A gift, perhaps. He doesn't like that he didn't think of the debt, of what he could extract from Thor in return. ″Think nothing of it.″

Thor squints his one eye open and does his best to scowl at Loki while still smiling. ″You do good work, brother. You should be proud.″

He does, and he is. He doesn't need Thor to tell him so. It comes to his awareness that without his bidding, his thumbs had been slowly stroking down Thor's temples; he snatches them away.

Thor catches Loki's wrists, and there it is, a decision to be made. Loki hisses in a breath and flings himself down a path at random. He'll see where it leads as he follows it. "You presume much, brother."

"If I had my way," Thor says, his fingers gentling on Loki's wrists but not releasing them, "If I had my way, I would never stop touching you. You were dead, Loki, for two years you were dead and I mourned you, and then you came back, you came _here_. Tell me it's wrong to presume that you feel the same." Thor gazes at Loki steadily, warm and overly earnest. Loki hates it, he loves it, he can't look away. They're already standing close together; it takes a conscious effort on Loki's part not to sway closer.

"You're asking me about right and wrong? Remember who you're talking to," Loki says, finally.

Thor brings one of Loki's hands to his face, turns his head, kisses his palm. Loki's breath catches. "I won't hold you against your will," Thor says softly. "If you must go, go. But I would ask you to stay."

It's an invitation, a signpost to a path Loki wouldn't have thought to look for. He takes it. He turns his hands in Thor's so their fingers are twined together, presses Thor's captive hands back against the window and looms over him so it's Loki with the advantage, leans in until their faces are a breath apart, kissing-close. He presses Thor's hands against the glass, a command: _stay still,_ and nips Thor's lower lip, soothes it with a flick of his tongue. "Like this?"

"Yes," Thor says, " _Yes_ , Loki, please," and surges forward, tugging against Loki's grip but not breaking it, to capture Loki's mouth.

Thor kisses like the opening moves of a sparring match: inexorable, measuring, purposeful. His mouth is hot like a brand; Loki feels as though he's been ignited from within. He had never seen this, but now that the path is open, Loki can't get enough, wants to leap ahead in great bounds, wants to press his body against Thor's and breathe in the scent of his skin and take him apart. He licks into Thor's mouth and grinds his hands into the glass over his head, bruising his own fingertips, and still it isn't enough. And somehow when they pause for breath, Thor pulls back and searches Loki's face warily, as if unsure of his welcome.

Loki searches his face back. There's no artifice there, only an embarrassing amount of hope and behind it, naked desire. "Is that all you wanted?" he asks, already knowing the answer.

"You know it isn't. I would take anything, Loki, anything you care to give. All of it."

Something warm curls in Loki's stomach. "Anything? Even though we're brothers?" He wants this, has wanted, he sees now, since long before he entered this room. It had never been relevant.

"Adopted," Thor adds, like he always does.

Interesting. "What if I _want_ to bed my brother?" He punctuates it by sucking a kiss into Thor's throat; in response Thor makes a breathless, needy noise and tips his head back, making the cords of his neck stand out. Loki bites one.

"Then we fuck as brothers," Thor says, voice rough. "Please say that means we can take this to a bed, Loki."

"You said you'd take whatever I gave you," Loki reminds him, with a sharp grin. "I intend to hold you to that."

Thor goes boneless and makes a very gratifying noise.

Loki plucks a few strings of magic and binds Thor's arms to the window, freeing his hands; he watches Thor's eye slip half shut and his breathing speed up as he tests the bonds, shifting on the window sill. He vanishes Thor's clothing piece by piece, touching Thor's shoulder, his waist, his thigh, letting the magic dissolve each garment until he's laid bare. He's kneeling down by the time he reaches Thor's boots, and he lets his fingers circle Thor's warm ankle, contemplative. "Do I need to bind you here, as well?" he asks, and Thor's high whine as his legs fall open is answer enough. "I should have known you'd be insatiable," he mutters around a new curl of arousal.

Thor makes a pretty picture, splayed out and bound against the glittering blackness outside, perched precariously on the narrow window still and his legs held wide by the invisible bond at each ankle. His cock is flagrantly, shamelessly, on display, red and thick and curving up toward his stomach. His skin is flushed from head to toe and his breathing is quick, shallow; eager for what comes next.

Loki realizes, between one thought and the next, that he could leave Thor here. Maybe that's what he came for: to trick Thor into this exact position, bound, exposed, humiliated, and then walk out and take — what? The ship, maybe. Or simply the satisfaction of having pulled one over on Thor, something he didn't see coming.

It bores Loki nearly as soon as it occurs to him, not least because Thor probably expects it, and put himself in this position nevertheless. Now that, _that's_ exciting. He stands, circles Thor. Thor tracks his motion. Loki flicks his wrist and a knife appears in his palm, long and diamond sharp. 

Thor lets out a breath. "If you were going to stab me, brother, you could have done it while we were hugging."

"I haven't decided yet if I'm going to stab you," Loki says. It doesn't feel like a very appealing option right now, but it might later. He trails the knife up Thor's side, too lightly to leave a mark, so light it must tickle. Thor's muscles go taut; he holds his breath as the tip of the knife skips up his ribs and settles in the groove of muscle right below his heart. "Hmm," Loki says, caught between the options. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a clear drop bead up on the head of Thor's cock; impulsively, he flicks the flat of the knife against the swell of Thor's chest right above his nipple, hard enough to make a sharp crack and startle a shocked gasp from Thor. 

Loki rubs his thumb over the red mark that's rising on Thor's skin and grins widely. He didn't even break the skin and Thor is already shaking, fine tremors in his curled fingers as he tries to breathe through it. 

"I should have known you'd be this easy," Loki says, trailing the tip of the knife up Thor's body to rest right next to where the pulse pounds in his neck. Should have known, but didn't. 

Thor gasps as Loki slaps him twice in quick succession, then ghosts the knife across his neck to the other side. "Please touch me," he says, before Loki can move the knife. "I can't —" 

Loki glances down at his cock, which is wet and leaking, twitches just from Loki looking at it. "I haven't decided whether I'm going to stab you yet," Loki breathes. The tip of the knife is making a tiny dent in Thor's skin; if Loki were to apply any more pressure, he'd draw blood. He doesn't want to mar the perfect canvas of Thor's skin, wants to paint in entirely invisible lines of anticipation and release, but at the same time, he wants to mark Thor up with red trails all up and down his straining arms, drip crimson down his broad chest, his thick legs, make him irrevocably Loki's. 

"Please," Thor says, and Loki flicks him sharply.

"I should keep you like this for hours," Loki says, even as he lets the knife clatter to the floor. He replaces the tip of the knife with his thumb, pressing in the way he hadn't let himself do a moment before, and Thor moans. Loki's other fingers come up to circle his throat, a soft touch on the soft skin, and he steps between Thor's open legs, leaning in until they're almost touching. "Tie you up and play with you until you're weeping, see if you can come without being touched at all. Cut you up a little bit, maybe." He skates his fingernails down Thor's chest at this, and Thor's breath catches.

" _Please_ ," Thor says again, and Loki finally relents and wraps his hand around Thor's cock. Thor's hips stutter, an aborted thrust.

"Hold still for me," Loki says, and Thor sobs. He hadn't known he was going to touch him until he did. Now that he's here, he doesn't know what he wants more: to bring Thor off in his hand, quick and dirty; to sink down and take him into his mouth; to strip of his clothes and rut against him until they both find release; to sit astride those broad thighs and use him, command him not to come until Loki was satisfied and — yes, definitely that last one is what he's been ramping up to this whole time.

He climbs into Thor's shallow lap, hikes one knee up onto the window sill and wraps his other around Thor so he can squeeze in close, and kisses Thor savagely. He vanishes his own clothing while they're pressed together from hip to chest. The sudden slide of skin on skin is shocking, glorious; Thor shouts with it and his hips buck under Loki until Loki growls a warning. Thor's skin is hot to the touch, slick with sweat, and once Loki has his hands on him he can't stop touching, pressing himself closer, needing more. Thor strains at his bonds until Loki admonishes him. "It's my turn, Thor. If you're good, maybe you can have a go later."

"There won't be anything left of me later," Thor says, but he tips his head back and submits to Loki's attentions.

Loki doesn't forget his true purpose for long. With a thought, he conjures a handful of slick. Most of it goes on Thor's cock; Loki spreads what's left on his entrance, perfunctory. He wants to work himself open on Thor's cock, wants to _feel_ this, now and for a long time after. 

"Fuck," Thor curses, when Loki clings to his shoulders for balance, lines them up and presses himself down on the fat, blunt head of Thor's cock.

"That's the idea," Loki says. He leans a little more of his weight into it and feels Thor's cock breach him, so slick it would have slid in like butter if he'd prepared himself for even a moment or two longer. But like this it's a dull burn, an aching throb that evens itself out into a deep pleasure as Loki fucks himself down on it. He gasps and digs his fingers into Thor's shoulders halfway down, his muscles screaming for a break that he's desperately unwilling to take. "A little help here," he gasps, and Thor surges under him, hips coming up to meet Loki as he bears down, and just like that Thor's entire length is inside him, impossibly full and wide.

"Good," Loki says, pushing himself upright with a hand on Thor's chest. "Now don't move until I say you can come." 

Thor drops his head back and whines, flexes his arms against their invisible bonds as if reassuring himself they'd hold. "If you say," he says, breathless.

A bloom of something halfway between arousal and pride fills Loki's chest, seeing his whim carried out so willingly. "I do say," he says, and scratches his fingers through the short hair on Thor's nape where he might once have grabbed a handful to keep his throat exposed. Thor groans and, true to his word, doesn't move.

Loki moves slowly at first, just grinding his hips and letting Thor's cock stretch him open, savoring the hot waves of pleasure that roll up his spine. Loki's cock is painting stripes of precome across Thor's abs, sharp bright jolts every time it makes contact with skin, and frankly it's distracting more than anything. He doesn't want to come right now, or anytime soon, doesn't want to interrupt the slow build before he sees how high it goes. It's good, Thor panting beneath him and twitching as he tries not to move, holding on and letting Loki take his pleasure. After a while, though, his knees begin to ache and he becomes aware of the limited range of motion this position affords him when he finally wants to _move_.

"Come on," Loki says. He runs his hands up Thor's arms and releases him from the window, guides his clumsy hands down around him as he frees his legs with a whisper. "I think it's time you take me to bed after all, what do you say?"

"While we're still—" Thor says, glancing down between their bodies and then back up at Loki's face.

Loki grins, slow and feral. "Take me to your bed and let me have my way with you, Thor."

Thor scoops Loki up with a hand under each thigh and walks them over to the bed, still joined, with barely a grunt of effort. He pauses at the edge of it, deferring to Loki's direction. "How do you want me?"

"Sit down," Loki says, and when he does, Loki pushes him down until his back hits the covers. "Good," Loki says, almost as pleased with how Thor looks spread out on the bed under him as he looked spread out against the stars. "Don't come until I do," Loki warns, and when Thor bites his lip and nods, he begins to move again.

It's better this way, more space to play with. Loki can lean back and really take Thor in deep, lift up and then work himself back down on his cock, lean forward and kiss Thor openmouthed as he grinds down. 

"Can I touch you, please," Thor gasps into Loki's mouth, his hands pressed flat by his sides. He lifts up to follow Loki when he leans back, as if he can't bear the distance. Loki could taunt, say he never forbade it, could make Thor beg, could forbid it and forbid Thor from touching himself and leave him entirely at Loki's mercy. 

"If you'd like," he says, because it's the option he can see least clearly, and he's curious what will happen. 

What happens is Thor runs his hands up Loki's legs, strokes the grooves of his hips. His hands wander across Loki's back, mapping the span of it, and one cradles the nape of Loki's neck and draws him into another kiss. "I can't believe you're still here," he says, and arches up as Loki leans back and takes him in deep.

The fire that he's been stoking is building beyond his control now; as he slams himself down on Thor's cock without finesse, he can feel the inferno buzzing in his limbs, melting his spine. "Bring me off," he says, taking Thor's hand and dragging it to his cock, unable to wait for his words to cross the space between them. Thor strokes him fast and tight, just what Loki needs, knocking his hand aside so he can brace himself on the bed and fuck down just right, Thor's cock hitting the perfect spot on every stroke. 

It's exquisite, it's a moment balance on the knife-edge between just enough and too much that Loki would stay in forever, if he could see a way — but he can't, all there is is Thor's hand and his cock and their sweat-streaked skin, the hair in Loki's eyes, Thor's voice when he says, "Fuck, Loki, I love you, but you're killing me here."

When Loki comes he sees stars. He lowers himself down while he's still gasping through the aftershocks, rests his cheek on Thor's chest because any distance would be too far, breathes in his bright thunder and rain scent. "Your turn," he gasps, because he doesn't want this to end, and also because he did say Thor could come. 

Thor flips them over and thrusts into Loki with a strangled groan; Loki rolls into it and another wave of pleasure catches him, impossibly. His entire body is lax and sated, and it's the easiest thing in the world to melt into the mattress and ride it out. Distantly he can hear that he's making small sounds as Thor fucks him, but he's too far gone to care. 

True to his word, Thor's been wound too tight to last long, but Loki's lost track of time, the instants all running together into one, so he can only guess how long it takes Thor to bury his face in Loki's shoulder and come. 

A moment later, Thor rolls to the side, his head still resting on Loki's shoulder and a leg slung over Loki's nearer leg, possessive. Loki should expect to feel trapped, stifled, but he can't muster the energy to expect it, and the feelings don't come. Thor winds his finger in a strand of Loki's hair and all Loki feels is a pleasant drifting, a strange tightness in his chest.

"You don't have to stay," Thor says, softly. "You should know I was only saying that in the heat of the moment."

"Too bad I don't believe you," Loki says, hearing the words only after they leave his lips. The heat of the moment. He finds he misses it, a little, that strange timeless bubble when there was only one path, straight and true, and no decisions he hadn't already matched a justification to. "Too bad I never said anything about leaving," he adds, liking the way it sounds. 

Thor presses a kiss to the join of Loki's neck and shoulder, cutting off a laugh, and then trails grinning kisses up Loki's neck, along his jaw, until he's kissing him on the mouth, still grinning too wide to do it properly. "I hope you mean that," he says when they part, beaming down into Loki's face. 

"Haven't made up my mind yet," Loki says, but Thor's joy is infectious; he has to hide his face in the crook of Thor's neck before an answering grin betrays him.

Thor, knowing Loki far too well, simply ignores this and says, "When we do this again, I don't think I'll be able to best your performance. If you ever wanted me to take the lead," he adds, abashed.

"I could be persuaded to consider it," Loki says, finding that he could. He wants a few more goes at Thor; he hasn't explored the half of what he wants to do to him, but if he sticks around long enough, he'd hate for this to get predictable.

"I'm in no rush to persuade you," Thor sighs happily. "My wildest imaginings, Loki, and you blow right past them. How long were you planning all that before you decided to give it a try?"

This time Loki lets a satisfied smile curl his on his lips. "Would you believe I made it all up as I went along?"

**Author's Note:**

> \- it was a toss up between a lyric from Red Trails and a lyric from Pink Up by Spoon for the title; for maximum effect I recommend listening to both on constant repeat while you read this
> 
> \- this whole thing came from that one "it changes from minute to minute" line in the movie, which, Loki was PROBABLY just messing with Bruce but I ran with it

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] the snow on fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16298840) by [kentucka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kentucka/pseuds/kentucka)




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